• Survived mostly as foragers or hunter-gatherers
  • thorough knowledge of local botany

• 10,000 years ago: foraging to farming

• Agriculture arose in several places

• Farming = basis of advanced civilizations
  • old and new worlds

• Foragers gather food provided by nature
  • still practiced by indigenous cultures
  • https://youtu.be/Pro6X_Kc5wA

• Selected for bipedalism in the Homo genus?
  • or brain size increases?

• Does NOT imply a vegetarian diet
  • Arctic Inuits = only meat
  • Hadza of Tanzania = vegetarian
  • !Kung of S. Africa = plants, eggs, fish, meat

• Fossil evidence reveals the diets of early foragers
  • charred seeds & preserved fruits
  • bones, shells & feathers

• Coprolites: fossilized poop!
  • pollen forensics

• Tool remains and cave drawings reveal meat diet

• 17,000 years ago: Wadi-Kubbaaniya in Nile Valley
  • 25 plant species
  • tubers of grasses with high starch
  • plants needed to be ‘processed’

• Evidence from key modern foraging societies
  • !Kung from tropical African savannas
  • most studied remaining gatherer communities

• 10,000 years of foraging history
  • continuing today
• !Kung forage over 100 species of plants and 50 animal species
  • 2355 kilocalories a day
  • 96 grams of protein
  • adequate vitamins and minerals

• Dedicated division of labor along gender lines
  • foraging = 2.5 days a week

• Recent diet trend returning to foraging past
  • similar to hunter-gatherer periods

• No dairy, refined grains or sugars or legumes
  • no available for past foragers

• Eat large quantities of meats, fruits, nuts, root vegetables and honey
  • human body ‘adapted’ for this diet

• Based on the fallacy that humans bodies have not evolved
  • lactase gene now ‘stays on’ passed infancy
  • assumes one kind of forager diet

• Archaeology shows plant cultivation started 10,000 years ago

• Agriculture flourished in Near East, Far East and Mesoamererica for thousands of years

• Question: Why the switch?
  • a brilliant sage saw the power of seeds?
  • was the transition a revolution?
  • did a gradual cultural evolution take place?
  • was it climate related?

• Farming spread from Near East
  • first to Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria
  • ~7500 years ago farming spread to rest of Europe

• DNA from ancient European foragers compared to earliest farmers
  • 15,000 - 4,300 years ago
  • not related!!!

• DNA also compared to modern Europeans
  • modern Europeans related to farmers, not foragers
  • first farmers were immigrants, that spread agriculture

• Theory of development & spread of agriculture
  • certain areas of the world & not it others
  • 0.7 miles per year

• East-West orientation in Eurasia
  • crops & livestock outward from fertile crescent

• North-South orientation in Americas
  • crops from Mexico to US (.5 miles/year)
  • llama spread Peru to Ecuador (.2 miles/year)

• Direction of domestication interacts with climate!

• Iran, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel
  • some of the oldest sites of agriculture

• Iran, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel
  • some of the oldest sites of agriculture

• Animals domesticated first
  • sheep, cattle and goats

• Jarmo site: 24 houses with ~150 people
  • 9,000 years ago
  • domesticated grains + foraging

• Fun fact: Cats domesticated 4,000 years ago
  • evidence from C4 plants!

• Rice cultivation began 11,500 years ago
  • farming then spread up- and down streams

• Domestication of millet, hemp, pigs, cattle & poultry after rice

• Silkworm domestication 5,000 years ago
  • 354 genes differ between domestic & wild

• Horse domestication 5,000 years ago
  • Batai from plains of Central Asia

• Timing of plant domestication matches Fertile Crescent and Far East

• Domestication of plants dominant
  • squash, corn, peppers, beans, avocado & potatoes

• Fewer animals domesticated
  • dogs, turkeys, alpacas & guinea pigs

• Archaeology points to Peru for farming origins

• Corn domestication in central Mexico
  • 5,000 years ago (found in caves)
  • arrived in US ~2,000 years ago

• Domesticated plants genetically distinct
  • artificial vs natural selection

• Wild plants: selection pressures from the environment
  • traits have ‘survival value’

• Domesticated plants: traits are breed to suit human needs
  • not always advantageous

• Example: Ensheating husks or non-shattering heads in corn and wheat

• Vavilov (Russian botanist) proposed 8 centers of crop domestication
  • highest diversity = origin
  • wild strains key for genetic diversity

• Trading & migration expanded range of crops

• Some crops do better in new areas
  • most of US crops are not native
  • coffee native to Ethiopia